Thoughts, the mind’s energy, directly influence how the physical brain controls the body’s physiology. Thought “energy” can activate or inhibit the cell’s function- producing proteins via the mechanics of constructive or destructive influence. In 1952 a young British doctor, Dr. Albert Mason, healed a boy’s hand of what he thought were warts, by hypnosis. Suggesting the power of the mind over the body. However he was not able to duplicate his success because he found out after he cured this 15 years old boy, that the boy did not have warts he had lethal genetic disease called congenital ichthyosis. Here again we see the power of the doctor’s mind (as opposed to the boy healing, that was the boy’s mind over the body). Doctor Mason failed to heal the other patients because of his belief that since the boy had the disease, it wasn’t the warts that he can cure.
Our brains control the whole community of cells in our bodies. It does so by chemical communication signals that are converted into sensations that are experienced by our cells. Our conscious mind experiences these signals as emotions, which are manifested through the release of signals by the nervous system.
In Molecules Of Emotions, Cadance Pert revealed how her study of information-processing receptors on nerve cell membranes led her to discover the same “neutral” receptors were present on most of the body’s cells. She discovered that the ”mind” was not focused in the head, but was distributed via signal molecules to the whole body. Her work emphasized that emotions were not only derived through a feedback of the body’s environmental information. Through self-consciousness, the mind can use the brain to generate “molecules of emotions” and override the system, Therefore proper use of consciousness can bring health to an ailing body, and inappropriate, unconscious control of emotions can easily make a healthy body diseased.
Our ability to be self reflective, gives us in the self-conscious mind much power. It can observe any programmed behavior and consciously change the program. We can actively choose how to respond to most environmental signals and weather we even want to respond. As renowned Biologist and author Bruce Lipton concludes in his book The Biology Of Belief: Unleashing The Power Of Consciousness, Mater & Miracles (2005):”The conscious mind’s capacity to override the subconscious mind’s preprogrammed behavior is the foundation of free will.”
Our responses to environmental stimuli are controlled by our perceptions, but not all learned perceptions are accurate. Perceptions do “control” biology, but not all perceptions are true. Hence, we would be more accurate to refer to these controlled perceptions as beliefs. According to Bruce Lipton in The Biology Of Belief: Unleashing The Power Of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles (2005): “Beliefs control biology!” In one of Bruce Lipton’s experiments with cells, he proved that the mind overrides the body. The adrenaline released by the central nervous system (the mind) overrode the influence of histamine signals that were produced by the body.
The placebo effect proves the above, when one believes falsely that he is getting medicine, he starts to feel better. A study in 1977 of the efficacy of Effexor stunned Janis Schonfeld that was given a placebo, and her 30-year depression lifted. She even experienced nausea, the effect of the Effexor drug. When she was told that she got the placebo she thought the researchers made a mistake in their records, that she indeed got the drug and not the placebo. That is how well she felt from the placebo. The nocebo effect has the same effect in a negative way. Nocebo cases suggest that physicians, parents and teachers can remove hope by programming us to believe we are powerless.
Our beliefs: positive and negative not only impacts our health, but also our life. Bruce Lipton says that our beliefs act like “filters on a camera”, changing how we see the world. And our biology adapts to these beliefs. When we recognize that our beliefs are that powerful, we hold the key to freedom. While we cannot change our genetic blueprints, we can change our minds/beliefs.
